Website design for Estate Agents

Why is a website crucial for an estate agency?

For any modern business, a smart, professional, Google optimised website is an important element of their marketing strategy. For an Estate Agent, this is not simply important, it's critical. Research shows that over 80% of all enquiries to an estate agent are generated online, that's 8 out of 10 buyers and perhaps more importantly sellers that engage with you first online, a scary prospect when you look at some estate agents websites .

Why choose Resource Techniques to design and build my website?

We have a long heritage of providing technology to the real estate industry, founded in 1989, we have been building estate agency software systems for over a quarter of a century. The website design side of our business was started over 10 years ago and today we support in excess of 1000 estate agency clients. We initially started building websites as a result of many of our software clients requesting this service of us due to poor experiences with other website providers. Today we offer without compromise, a full service product that speaks for itself - see our portfolio

What is a full service website design agency?

Our original objective and strategy for our new website business back in the early 2000s, was to offer good value products without compromising on the quality of design and importantly that included on-site SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) . This was, and surprisingly still is, often not carried out by the design agency but done after the site is live by a third party SEO agency (meaning many clients pay twice for their site). It was for this reason that we started building websites, on a full service basis, helping our clients build their online presence by offering a great product at a fair price that included everything, including SEO.

Today and as a consequence of this strategy, our business has flourished, but we never forget our commitment to our clients and still today our values of fairness of price and our full service based products remains.

How to stay ahead in the ever changing world of technology?

Our business proposition today has, as you might imagine being centred on the ever changing world of technology, developed and evolved beyond anything we could have imagined just 10 years ago. Who could have predicted that technology would have become such an integral part of our everyday lives and just how much we, as both individuals and business owners, would become so entirely beholden on all things web and technical.

Fuelled by this lightning fast pace of technological advancements, we are totally focused on enabling and ensuring that our clients are at the forefront of technology. To this end we have a dedicated team of tech savvy professionals that follow this ever changing landscape, identifying new technologies and where we can use this to improve our business offering. This, unlike most web design agencies, does not simply apply to new clients as our foundation layer of technology is available to all clients, existing and new. So if Google make a change to their algorithm (which they do almost every day) that is likely to have a negative impact on our client's websites, then it is identified; a fix is made and then rolled out to all of our website customers. This web smart strategy allows our clients to benefit from a constantly updated product and a degree of future proofness that is rare within the industry.

How do I know if I need a new website?

Most know or at least begrudgingly resign themselves to the idea that their 10 year old site is probably ready for a facelift... but here are a few tips and advice on what you should be looking for:

Does your site rank on Google? This is the easiest check to perform yourself, go to Google and try a few search terms 'estate agents in (your town name)' ,'letting agents in (your town name)', 'Houses for sale in (your town name)', 'Flats for sale in (your town name)' etc. If your business is not highly ranked on page one for these commonly used search terms, you probably need some work done or maybe a new website.

Does your website work properly on all devices, i.e. all internet browsers, all devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac PC) if not, you probably need a new site.

Is your site optimised for a mobile device? No?

How does your site compare with your competition?

Does your website have the wow factor?

If you are unsure we offer a full and FREE website review to help you understand if your site is good, bad or even ugly.

What will my new site do that my old one doesn't?

You only have to think about your own experience using the web. The vast majority of internet users start their journey at Google's search engine, typing the search phrase that most matches what they are looking for. Google then lists the results for the key phrase and most users start at the top of the list and work down until they find a site that is the most relevant to their requirements... Sounds simple doesn't it. But for all this to work for your own site, the site has to be well optimised for Google to allow for all of the potential search phrases that the general public might search for and even then if your site is lucky enough to be listed, it has to be 'sticky' enough for users to not click the back button and go to the next site listed by Google (i.e. your competition).

Sites have to wow the user, engage them so that they believe they have found 'THE SITE'. All this takes a huge amount of engineering, research, technology and knowhow...

So in a nut shell, your new site will be optimised and easily searchable, be sticky enough to wow and engage your potential clients and awesome enough to make them want to keep coming back.

What is responsive website design?

With the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, iPads, minis and now even pablets the consequence of this trend to an estate agents website is that more and more of the traffic to your site is from one of the aforementioned mini devices. What responsive design does is identifies the device the website is being viewed on and displays it in such a way as to ensure it provides the best user experience. This is achieved by using the very latest in website design methods and tools, such as HTML 5 and CSS3. Try the example 3 below on different devices to understand how this works for the user -

Will my new website be optimised for smart phones?

Similarly to the above, there has and continues to be a huge increase in the number of mobile devices, smart phones in particular. It is therefore more important than ever to have a mobile friendly website. So if you're looking for a fully responsive website or simply one that is smartphone friendly we are able to help.

To find out how Resource Techniques can make your website truly awesome - contact us